BASILISK
An entry for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest, inspired by “Ganzfeld Gate” by Cody Goodfellow
This is a scenario that can be run on its own, or as the prologue to a further scenario. Best with 3-4 players.
An isolated psychedelic cult manipulated by the Yithians uses advanced technology to channel a potent agent. The players are cult members enlisted to procure a subject to be its host.
DAWN
Read the following to your players to set the stage, then encourage them to improvise what they are doing at dawn as the opening scene of the scenario. It is 1998, but they have to re-discover this.
Your characters are space cadets & burnouts, the lost children of the peace-love era. You’ve been with The Commune for the better part of six months, maybe eight? The Commune was populated by fellow travelers, with enough weed, coke, LSD, and Mescaline to knock over a city. It’s on The Island, which you remember is off of Baja.
Some say it's a cult, some say it’s CIA MKULTRA pornographic mind-control. Who knows? Who cares? Things went crazy a long time ago, a lot of people have died. You’ve been up the better part of the night on your narcotic of choice with your head in the stars. The high is starting to come down now. You’re more or less lucid. You spot each other in the sunrise.
What do they see you doing?||
The players start on the Beach. Let them explore if they like. After a moment, there’s a call over a distant loudspeaker for them to come to the “Nerve Centre”.
ON THE ISLAND
- Greenhouse: Big and long and glass. Some fruits and vegetables and weed. Some gardening tools.
- Search: A hatch labeled compost contains human skeletons and a machete.
- Stockhouse: Storage building. Enough food to last for months, not even including the stuff that’s traded with the normals back on the mainland.
- Alertness: One of the feral children appears to have spent considerable time drawing some strange snail-like creature with crab claws and eye stalks.
- Dormitories: Alleged sleeping quarters, reek of sex. MOTHER TIGER and her MAENADS frequently gather here for the occasional narco-orgy.
- Longhall: The cafeteria and the break room, the seat of the WATER BARON DANIEL.
- Woods: Grove of trees, home of the PROFESSOR and his ilk. Littered with corpses and the Professor’s crude paintings.
- Requires an Alertness test to avoid stepping into one of the Professor’s spike traps.
- The Wharf: Where a few of the fishing boats are moored.
- Hidden inside of one of the boats is a revolver with four bullets.
- The Nerve Center: described below.
THE NERVE CENTER
A huge complex accessed by a flight of stairs under the island. Huge, concrete, modern. Descending the stairs, there is a shrine. A black and white picture of a man dated from the 70s framed beautifully, with an altar about it. Signed “Dr. Allanson”. Seeing it incites a POWx5 test to summon memories from the narcotic mind-fog
- CRITICAL: Same as Success + you helped the doctor hide his pistol in one of the fishing boats before he drowned. You know where it is.
- SUCCESS: He built BASILISK, the machine in the Nerve Center. He built it, then he tried to break it, then he drowned himself.
- FAILURE: Same as Success. Half-baked flashbacks to an DMT psycho-orgy involving Allanson cost you 1 WP
- FUMBLE: Same as Failure, you also remember him putting his gun in your face and screaming at you the morning before he died, lose 1/1d3 SAN from violence.
At the bottom of the stairs is a room, the words “Mausoleum of Reason” painted along the floor. Trampled, defaced, and burned paper and books litter the floors. It reeks of liquor and sex and worse. Adjoining rooms contain the Commune’s drug collection, some bedrooms, a gun collection, and the BASILISK. A huge machine with wiring and cables spooling out of beige-and-red plastic casing that connects to a mask that reminds you of a blowfish.
- Search: Many of the books on the floor deal with psychology and the occult. There are a few obscure references to “The Library of Pnakotus”.
- Weapons kept in the armory include: 2 revolvers, a submachine gun, a tranquilizer dart gun, machetes
RUSSELL and BALDWIN are there. They finish a plate of coke and tell the PCs that after Allanson’s botched attempt to destroy BASILISK, they’ve had a breakthrough and managed to get it to work. This is a revolutionary moment for the commune. They’ve got enough power from the gas generator for it to run once. They’re ready for its first test, so now they want the agents to locate a “prime candidate” for them.
BASILISK?
If they ask what it is. Russell and Baldwin tell the PCs that BASILISK takes much of the established research done with biofeedback and pushes it a step further, the machine “talks” to you and guides you to a higher state of meditation and consciousness. They’ll say that Allanson had a better way of explaining it. A successful HUMINT test tells the PCs they can tell they aren’t even really sure what it does, on a critical roll, it’s apparent they don’t even really know what they did to fix it.
ME!
If one of the players volunteers, Russell and Baldwin invite them to sit and don the mask. They’re greeted with a dull crimson HUD that simply reads “Another Path Must be Taken”. Russell and Baldwin explain they saw the same message. Donning the mask later will earn other, more ominous messages alluding to nuclear war and “The library”.
VOLUNTEERS
Russell and Baldwin will offer three recommendations, based on who they’ve found is the most experienced “Narconaut”. Their recommendations are MOTHER TIGER, and THE PROFESSOR. They don’t think the Water Baron would be a good candidate, but know he’ll want to go first. The trouble won’t be convincing any of them to join, but rather keeping it a secret from the others so as to avoid their jealous wrath.
WATER BARON DANIEL
- Holds court in the Longhall, controls the clean water. Is protected by two armed men. Cages containing filthy, rotting, mostly dead thieves litter the hall and outside.
- If he learns that BASILISK is ready, and wasn’t approached to be the first subject, he will only relent if a sexual favor or other depraved entertainment is paid to him. None of the women on the island find Daniel tolerable. Will disrupt the ritual with his cadre later.
MOTHER TIGER
- Wanders the island, though often is practicing sex magick in the dormitories. Completely fried on peyote and LSD a long time ago.
- Will only accept not being first in line for BASILISK if she is afforded the Nerve Center’s entire supply of mescaline upfront or is given a human “offering”.
- The maenads will attack the ritual later if she isn’t the vessel, she stays behind.
THE PROFESSOR
- The Professor dwells in the woods. Alone.
- Many think he has devolved, he doesn’t even talk. Just skulks around the woods half naked. Physically powerful and supposedly a prodigy “psychonaut”.
- Will not react if he is not chosen for BASILISK. Though later he will fall under its sway, and slaughter all of the feral children and do the BASILISK’s bidding.
BASILISK
Whoever is chosen for BASILISK, they are escorted to the nerve center, fed an unholy concoction of drugs, and seated in the machine. They begin talking to it, and it begins answering. In between answers are whirlpools of color and flashes of strange images, fire, a library in the jungle, gigantic alien snails. The subject howls. Then all is quiet. The host rises and explains that it, BASILISK, came here from “Pnakotus” to lead humanity down the narrow path of greatness into the future, inhabiting the subject as its host. BASILISK asks who will join it, then leads them to the beach, allowing those who relent to leave peacefully. It will ask for their help in performing a “ritual” to initiate this journey. It will relay personal details about the player characters and science, even performing a technological miracle to prove its alien providence.
DUSK
After reaching the beach, it asks the players to join hands in a circle. The Professor wordlessly joins them if he is not BASILISK’s host, caked in blood. The ritual involves drugs, meditation, and song as BASILISK adjusts its machine. As the ritual concludes, the players feel the cool, calculating presence of BASILISK inside their mind, and they feel each other’s minds. It is then that the group they’ve angered the most attacks the players.
After a few rounds of combat. A piercing screech emits from the machine BASILISK constructed. Anyone who has agreed to “join” BASILISK is unaffected, everyone else who hasn’t and who was present on the beach to hear the noise immediately begins killing each other as violently as possible. As an orgy of carnage unfolds around them, BASILISK calmly instructs the players to follow her to the wharf, where it commandeers a boat, and leads them away, towards the mainland.
If you are interested in using this as a prologue to another scenario, then have your agents then interview the surviving PCs from your playthrough, or have it dictated to them by NANCY after having a meal of their remains
APPENDIX
WATER BARON DANIEL
The Water Baron is a stocky asian male standing at 5’10”. He wears a stained black jumpsuit under a kevlar vest, and adorns himself with a strange looking blue face mask resembling a harlequin or comedy mask. All of his military gear has patches and stamps marking it as property of the Mexican army.
THE WATER BARON DANIEL
Lord of the Flies
STR 10 CON 12 DEX 11 INT 10 POW 9 CHA 8
HP: 11 WP: 9 SAN: 24 BREAKING POINT: 18
BONDS: None.
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Addiction (Stimulants), Megalomania, Explore the spectrum of sensation, chase material pleasures, Adapted to Violence
SKILLS: Alertness 45%, Athletics 40%, Dodge 50%, Firearms 50%, HUMINT 35%, Melee Weapons 30%, Persuade 50%, Pharmacy 50%, Stealth 30%, Unarmed 40%
ARMOR: Kevlar Vest (3)
ATTACKS: M16A4 50% 1d12 Damage or Lethality 10%, Armor Piercing 3
Walther P38 50% 1d8 Damage
DANIEL’S CADRE
Armed guards that protect Daniel. Both wear latex masks, one of Bill Clinton, the other of Bob Dole, both defaced with obscene graffiti.
DANIEL’S CADREThe Damned
STR 10 CON 10 DEX 9 INT 10 POW 11 CHA 8
HP: 10 WP: 11 SAN: 40 BREAKING POINT: 33
DISORDERS: Addiction (Stimulants), Adapted to Violence
SKILLS: Alertness 45%, Athletics 40%, Dodge 50%, Firearms 40%, Unarmed 40%
ARMOR: Kevlar Vest (3)
ATTACKS: Sten Guns 40% 1d10 or Lethality 10%
MOTHER TIGER
Mother Tiger, a cuban-hispanic woman standing at 5’8” with red hair, spends most of the time almost entirely nude except for a belt she uses to carry weapons and occasionally a cape. Her entire body is painted in rust-red tribal paint, with little pictograms of suns and waves and people eating other people.
MOTHER TIGER
The Divine Feminine
STR 12 CON 12 DEX 13 INT 13 POW 14 CHA 12
HP: 12 WP: 14 SAN: 32 BREAKING POINT: 28
BONDS: The Maenads (5)
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Delusions (of godliness), Transcend the Material, Female Empowerment
FOREIGN LANGUAGES: She-Speak 50%, Koine Greek 40%
SKILLS: Alertness 60%, Art (Music) 40%, Athletics 65%, Dodge 60%, First Aid 35%, Firearms 25% History 70%, HUMINT 40%, Melee Weapons 70%, Occult 55%, Pharmacy 10%, Stealth 55%, Unarmed 60%
ARMOR: None.
ATTACKS: Spear 70%, 1d8 damage, 3 armor piercing
Knife 70%, 1d6 damage, 3 armor piercing
Revolver 25%, 1d10 damage
SHE-SPEAK: Mother Tiger and her Maenads frequently communicate in their own language which the others have started to call “She-Speak”, a trained ear could detect that it is a mix of English, Mexican Spanish, Koine Greek, and some words that are probably of their own invention. No one on the island other than the maenads can understand and they are not willing to teach it.
MAENAD
The Maenads, like their matriarch, spend their days naked as the day they were born. They similarly adorn themselves with tribal paint.
THE MAENADS
Cultists of Mother Tiger
STR 12 CON 12 DEX 11 INT 10 POW 13 CHA 12
HP: 12 WP: 13 SAN: 30 BREAKING POINT: 26
BONDS: Mother Tiger (12)
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Obsession (Mother Tiger)
FOREIGN LANGUAGES: She-Speak 30%, some speak spanish, italian, and russian at 30%
SKILLS: Alertness 60%, Art (Music) 40%, Athletics 65%, Dodge 60%, First Aid 35%, Melee Weapons 70%, Stealth 55%, Unarmed 60%
ARMOR: None.
ATTACKS: Spear 70%, 1d8 damage, 3 armor piercing
Knife 70%, 1d6 damage, 3 armor piercing
THE PROFESSOR
The Professor is a caucasian man standing at 6’6” and heavily muscled. He never bathes or speaks and adorns himself in brown / black / sepia body paint.
THE PROFESSORPhD from Stanford turned Brutal Primitive
STR 15 CON 15 DEX 10 INT 15 POW 10 CHA 5
HP: 15 WP: 10 SAN: 25 BREAKING POINT: 20
BONDS: None.
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Schizophrenia, Claustrophobia, Hunt. Eat. Propagate.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES: English 5%, Spanish 10%
SKILLS: Alertness 70%, Athletics 60%, First Aid 30%, HUMINT 30%, Medicine 30%, Melee Weapons 65%, Search 30%, Stealth 60%, Survival 60%, Swim 40%, Unarmed 55%
ARMOR: None.
ATTACKS: Unarmed 55% 1d4 Damage
Sledgehammer 65% 1d8 Damage, 2 Armor Piercing
Spear 65% 1d8 Damage, 3 Armor Piercing
Knife 65% 1d6 Damage, 3 Armor Piercing
NON LINGUAL: Although he retains much of his intellect, the Professor no longer understands (or maybe pretends to not understand) spoken language, and communicates in stern looks and grunts.
FERAL CHILDREN
The Feral children are of a variety of ethnicities, the youngest are about 6, the oldest around 12-11.
FERAL CHILDREN
No One Knows How the Fuck They Got Here
STR 8 CON 7 DEX 14 INT 8 POW 8 CHA 8
HP: 8 WP: 8 SAN: BREAKING POINT: 24
BONDS: The Professor (4)
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Dissociative Identity Disorder
SKILLS: Alertness 50%, Athletics 40%, Melee Weapons 35%, Search 30%, Stealth 60%, Survival 60%, Unarmed 55%
ARMOR: None.
ATTACKS: Spear 65% 1d8 Damage, 3 Armor Piercing
Knife 65% 1d6 Damage, 3 Armor Piercing
Unarmed 55% 1d4-1
LANGUAGE: The Feral Children can only understand Spanish.
BASILISK
Basilisk operates the body of its human host, and inherits all of their physical traits and ability scores.
BASILISK
Behold and Despair
STR as host DEX as host CON as host INT 20 POW 20 CHA 8
HP as host WP 20
SKILLS See TOTAL KNOWLEDGE
ATTACKS: See THE SOUND
TOTAL KNOWLEDGE: BASILISK exists outside of time and has prepared for the exact sequence of events transpiring in this scenario. All skills are rolled at 75%
TEMPORAL OMNISCIENCE: At the beginning of any contest or conflict with BASILISK, the player must make a luck roll, on a failure, all rolls made by BASILISK against them are at +20%.
THE SOUND An alien sound emitted by the BASILISK. Everyone who hears it must make an unnatural SAN roll (1D8/1D20) (at the ritual on the beach, this will be everyone on the beach, others further away on the island will have to pass alertness tests with appropriate buffs or penalties to hear) all who go temporarily insane viciously attack the nearest person who isn’t mentally connected to BASILISK. Those who do not go temporarily insane are stunned for 2d4 rounds by the sound.
PREGENS
Anja, the Weatherwoman
STR 11 CON 10 DEX 13 INT 12 POW 10 CHA 11
HP: 11 WP: 10 SAN: 40 BREAKING POINT: 30
BONDS: The Weathermen (11)
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Depression, regain your focus, stay prepared, justice.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES: Cuban Spanish 50%
SKILLS: Alertness 60%, Athletics 40%, Craft (Electrician) 30%, Criminology 50%, Demolitions 40%, Firearms 50%, First Aid 40%, HUMINT 35%, Melee Weapons 40%, Occult 30%, Persuade 20%, Science (Chemistry) 30%, SIGINT 40%, Stealth 60%, Survival 20%, Unarmed 50%,
ATTACKS: Unarmed 50% 1d4-1 damage.
- Parents were part of the Weather Underground. They took you with them to Cuba to train you in guerilla warfare. When they got back, they got nabbed by the ATF for trying to smuggle automatic weapons into the country.
- They didn’t suspect you, since then, you’ve been a drifter, you’ve reconnected with a few cells, though they’ve all become inactive, given up. You see yourself in their inadequacy, their failure. You hate yourself for that.
- You came to the Commune hoping you’d find some like minded people that you could influence to become your own next cell. What you found was drugs and the madness they created.||
Richard, The Stanfordite
STR 9 CON 10 DEX 9 INT 14 POW 14 CHA 10
HP: 10 WP: 14 SAN: 56 BREAKING POINT: 42
BONDS: None.
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Addiction (Narcotics), Observe the mysteries of the human psyche, Explore the mind, stay alive
FOREIGN LANGUAGES: Latin 20%, German 20%
SKILLS: Alertness 20%, Dodge 50%, Firearms 40%, First Aid 60%, HUMINT 50%, Medicine 50%, Persuade 40%, Pharmacy 40%, Psychotherapy 80%, Science (Biology) 50%, Science (Neurology) 50%, Science (Pharmacology) 50%, Search 40%,
ATTACKS: Unarmed 40%, 1d4-1 damage
Richard, the Stanfordite, 50s
- Californian born and raised, came up through Stanford hoping that it would put you at the cutting edge of psychology. It did.
- Got roped into coming out here by Russell & Baldwin, they gave you the impression this was some sort of MKULTRA spinoff.
- You feel a sting of guilt for what’s happened, all this madness, this murder. You’ve created your own little Gehenna. Maybe it's what you deserve?||
Lloyd, The Fed
STR 13 CON 10 DEX 12 INT 12 POW 13 CHA 9
HP: 12 WP: 13 SAN: 45 BREAKING POINT: 39
BONDS: Russell & Baldwin (9)
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Schizophrenia, Have something good to turn over to your Handlers, Keep yourself alive, Smoke ‘em while you got ‘em.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES: Cree 60%, Spanish 20%
SKILLS: Alertness 50%, Craft (Electrician) 20%, Criminology 70%, Disguise 30%, Dodge 50%, Firearms 50%, HUMINT 60%, Persuade 50%, Search 50%, Stealth 50%, Unarmed 60%
ATTACKS: Unarmed 60% 1d4
Lloyd, the Fed, 30s
- The FBI thought that because you were Cree, you’d be the best fit for infiltrating Indian civil rights groups so you could sabotage them from within. Someone somewhere also thought that given your people’s “spiritual tendencies”, you’d be a good fit for whatever it is Russell and Baldwin are doing out here in fucking Baja
- You had control, you think, for a while. But not for very long. Now you’re just as cooked as the rest on LSD. They won’t have you back at the office, you’re too far gone. “Gone native” they might call it, the motherfuckers.
- You’re actually having trouble differentiating the fever dreams, the LSD funhouse rides, and the day-to-day on the Island apart from each other. They don’t know you’re a fed, or maybe they don’t care.||
Tabitha, the Flowerchild
STR 10 CON 12 DEX 12 INT 14 POW 12 CHA 13
HP: 11 WP: 12 SAN: 48 BREAKING POINT: 36
BONDS: Anja (6)
MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS: Delusions (occasionally hallucinates her dead lover), peace and quiet, living in harmony with others, everyone can get along
FOREIGN LANGUAGES: Plattdeutsch 30%
SKILLS: Alertness 40%, Athletics 40%, Craft (Microelectronics) 40%, Craft (Farming) 40%, Dodge 60%, HUMINT 50%, Medicine 40%, Melee Weapons 50%, Navigate 60%, Persuade 25%, Science (Biology) 30%, Science (Chemistry) 30%, Search 40%, Stealth 60%, Unarmed Combat 40%
ATTACKS: Unarmed 40% 1d4-1
Tabitha, the Flowerchild, 20s
- Raised strict by Mennonites, all that flew out the fucking window when you went to university to study agriculture and smoked weed and slept with another girl on your second night there.
- She brought you here, Delilah? Daisy? You can’t remember. Can’t place what became of her? Is she one of the Maenads? Mother Tiger? Did the Professor cave in her skull with his hammer the night Things Got Bad. You don’t know. Too many sleepless nights, too much mescaline, too much crying and laughing.
- Sometimes she visits you in dark moments.||
Credits
Basilisk was written by Finley Deeley for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1THs4a4dA49eXFmWYtzEkC6UjcwebGaBEbRS-m2I3BBo/edit